This summer I interned at Boom! Studios in Los Angeles. I found out about the internship online – one of the editors at Boom, Shannon Watters, follows my Tumblr blog and when I posted that I was looking for an internship, she reached out to me and let me know about their internship program. We emailed back and forth for a while, then I submitted my resume and did a phone interview with the rest of the company and was offered the position a few days later. Boom! Studios is a top-ten comics publishing company – they publish everything from superhero comics to indie titles to all-ages comics, including one of their current headliners, the Adventure Time comics.
It is a fairly small company, and the atmosphere is very laid back. Shannon was my direct supervisor, and really took me under her wing. As an editor and an industry insider, she gave me a lot of advice and introduced me to a lot of comic professionals, as well as showing me around LA. 
I got along very well with everyone at the company and felt very comfortable while I was there. I was a design intern, so I worked with the graphic designs on single issues, trades, and whatever other projects that needed designing. Once I got the hang of the programs, the designers entrusted me with a variety of projects, from creating editorials to designing a Comic-Con flier to eventually doing most of the design work on a Garfield trade. At Comic-Con, I helped work the booth, which was a lot of fun.
I was most proud of my performance at Comic-Con, since making connections is very important in comics and I did a lot of networking and got to know all the other employees at Boom! very well.
I think networking was my biggest take-away from this experience – especially since my experience ended in the best possible scenario, with the offer from Boom! to continue a relationship with me as a professional. I forged a lot of connections within the comics and entertainment industries, and made a lot of great friends as well. I understand the technical and business side of comics a lot better now and made myself known as an up-and-coming comic artist, which was the goal from the beginning.
-Noelle Stevenson '13, Illustration
